Word.ws English Dictionary

cutlass

/ˈkʌtləs/

cutlass noun: a short sword with a curved blade, and a convex edge; once used by sailors when boarding an enemy ship.

cutlass: a short sword with a curved blade, and a convex edge; once used by sailors when boarding an enemy...
Image: Rama, CC BY-SA 3.0 fr, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

cutlass (plural cutlasses)

  1. A short sword with a curved blade, and a convex edge; once used by sailors when boarding an enemy ship.
    • She could feel Tern’s stare fixed right between her shoulder blades, and knew he was aching to plunge his cutlass there.2015 September 1, Sarah J. Maas, Queen of Shadows, →ISBN
    • In vain the captain threatened to throw him overboard; suspended a cutlass over his naked wrists; Queequeg was the son of a King, and Queequeg budged not.1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter XII, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC
  2. A similarly shaped tool; a machete.

Verb

cutlass (third-person singular simple present cutlasses, present participle cutlassing, simple past and past participle cutlassed)

  1. (transitive) To cut back (vegetation) with a cutlass.

cutlass meaning in Tamil, Bengali and Malayalam

cutlass in Tamil

உடைவாள், வாள்

cutlass in Bengali

ছোটো খড়গ, তলোয়ার

cutlass in Malayalam

കഠാരി, വീതിയുള്ള ചെറിയ വാൾ, ചെറുവാൾ

Synonyms of cutlass

Forms of cutlass

Noun
pluralcutlasses
Verb
third-person singular presentcutlasses
present participlecutlassing
past participlecutlassed
pastcutlassed

Plural of cutlass: cutlasses

Origin of cutlass

From Middle French coutelas, from Old French coutel (“knife”) + -as (augmentative suffix).

Words formed from cutlass

Phrases with cutlass

Questions about cutlass

What does cutlass mean?
Cutlass means a short sword with a curved blade, and a convex edge; once used by sailors when boarding an enemy ship.
What is cutlass in Tamil?
Cutlass in Tamil is உடைவாள், வாள். See Cutlass meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is cutlass?
Cutlass can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce cutlass?
Cutlass is pronounced /ˈkʌtləs/.
What is the plural of cutlass?
The plural of cutlass is cutlasses.

Words near cutlass in the dictionary

  1. Cutland
  2. cutlas
  3. cutlases
  4. cutlash
  5. cutlashes
  6. cutlass
  7. cutlass bearing
  8. cutlass bearings
  9. cutlass fish
  10. cutlass fishes
  11. cutlassed

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cutlass (page history and authors); cutlass (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); cutlass (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); cutlass (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-cutlass.ogg.

Cite this entry: “cutlass.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cutlass. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.